Are we really reviewing Christmas products in September!? Yes ChocolateMission crew we most certainly are :-)

The Countdown to Christmas starts here on ChocolateMission. The shelves of our supermarkets have already been in stock of Christmas gear for weeks now. We've slowly come to terms that we are now well into the fourth quarter of the year and have been easing ourselves in try out some of the new chocolatey treats on offer to us for 2013.

Below are the first of two new Cadbury Dairy Milk offerings. They may be small but that didn't mean the team were lacking in opinion:

This new Cadbury Dairy Milk Snowman comes in a 30.0g form and can be bought individually. The concept of the product follows much the same idea of the Cadbury Egg 'n' Spoon we saw for the first time last Easter - 'Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate with a vanilla mousse centre'. On the face of things all looked rather great. The packaging carried some new style Dairy Milk branding (watch out for this being implemented across the range soon!) and clearly displayed the fun festive themed chocolate snowman inside.

The on-pack illustratives thankfully didn't deceive - the snowman looked exactly as displayed with a thick outer shell of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate hiding away a fluffy pale coloured mousse centre. When it came to the taste test the team as expected gave thumbs up all round. The experience was much aligned to the aforementioned Cadbury Egg 'n' Spoon with the creamy sweet Dairy Milk chocolate nicely being complimented by the lighter vanilla flavoured centre. These Mousse Snowman will be for those with sweeter tooths but the 30.0g serving size was just about right for a satisfying fulfilling portion.

Overall we will happily give the Cadbury Dairy Milk Mousse Snowman a ChocolateMission thumbs up. The idea may have been nicked from their limited edition exploits at Easter but it's a welcome return for the combination and would suggest you get involved if you enjoyed the Cadbury Egg 'n' Spoon.

We will keep this one short and sweet as we don't want to harp on the negatives :-) Cadbury have this year taken the decision to detach themselves from Magical Elves and hang their Popping Candy hats on our dearly beloved Mr Freddo. Indeed unfortunately Mr Freddo is now the character being used to host Cadbury's annual popping candy Christmas treat.

Whilst we can say we liked the packaging and presentation (you can't not love Mr Freddo), our froggy friend still can't help the fact he has now been tarnished with the ChocolateMission kryptonite popping candy. The goodness of the Dairy Milk chocolate is still there but almost everyone in the team still isn't in tune with the horrible crackling sensation that comes up with inclusion of the popping candy.

Overall the teams opinion is very much subjective so whilst we may not enjoy these Popping Candy Freddo we are sure there will be plenty that will love them. No doubt these will sell by the bucketload but can they really justify a £0.65 price point for just 18.0g of chocolate!? Drop us a line @Chocmission to let us know what you think of them. Apologies for the rating Mr Freddo.